Transforming Love

The fall of the year is my time for new beginning. It is a time for new clothes, a new look, learning new things, and usually a time when I long to make myself over. It is a time to try on a new me- a thinner, taller, smarter, younger, nicer me- and if I try hard enough, want it badly enough, and am persistent enough, I can make some if it happen. I can transform my outward appearance by an act of my own will. (The younger and taller I haven’t figured out yet.)

When I want to transform my personality, I can even do that. I can act more outgoing and more loving than I feel. If I try hard, I can act excited when needed. The one part of me that I have never been able to transform is my heart. I can’t make my heart be anything except what it is. It is impossible for me to change how my heart, my inner being responds to irritants in my life. Jesus tells me that I am to love my enemy, do good to those who hate me, bless those who curse me, and pray for those that mistreat me. (Luke 6:27) If I work at it, I can act as if I love my enemies. I can “grit my teeth” and do some act of kindness for someone who hates me. The problem with acting out what Jesus has asked me to do is that I feel more anger and resentment in my heart, not love. These acts may do some good for my enemies, but they do no good at all for me.

When Jesus prays for us in John 17:20-26, he asks “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” He goes on to say, “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” The unifying factor that brings us all together and draws the lost to God is not our theology. It is the love that God has for his Son that is in those surrendered to Jesus Christ.

John gives us a definition of that transforming love when he says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) In our finite minds we cannot comprehend the kind of love that would sacrifice a child for someone else. It is incomprehensible, but it is real. It is supernatural, and it transforms us from the inside out. The love that gave up a son, that allowed the Son to suffer and transforms a dead body to new life, is the love that also gives us new life. It is the power made available to us as a result of the cross that fills us with a supernatural ability to love the unlovely, to bless those who curse us, and to pray with hearts filled with love for those who mistreat us.

When we are transformed by this love, the scriptures take on new meaning. They no longer read like an impossible to-do list but a way of living that comes as the result of God’s incredible love. We no longer act loving, we are loving. We no longer believe that God is real, we know that he is. Worship is no longer a duty but a longed-for event.

If you are looking for a transformation, I challenge you to ask God daily to fill you with his supernatural love. “You do not have because you do not ask.” James 4:2b

Transforming Love 10/23/01